Creating plant catalogs from the database
As described in Concept: Plant style and plant data integration, the source of plant data for plant styles can be either plant catalogs or the plant database. There are several ways of creating and editing plant catalogs, but one way of creating them is from the plant database.
Creating plant catalogs from the entire set, or from found sets, in the plant database allows you to create a plant catalog with a smaller subset of plants to choose from. Create as many plant catalogs as necessary.
To create a plant catalog from the plant database:
Open the plant database; see Accessing the plant database.
Search for the plants to include in the plant catalog (see Searching for plants). The plant catalog is created from a found set of records, or from all the plant records. Larger plant catalogs take longer to load into the Vectorworks program.
Select the File > Create Vectorworks Plant Catalog database command.
The Create Plant Catalog dialog box opens. Provide a name for the plant catalog.
The plant catalog file is a tab-delimited file saved in the location of the plant database.
Another way of creating a plant catalog from the plant database is to save a found set from the plant database with the Find > Save Current Find database command.
Plant catalogs from categories
To create plant catalogs based on plant category:
Open the plant database; see Accessing the plant database.
Select the File > Create Category Plant Catalogs database command.
A plant catalog is created for each category. If no plants are found for a category, no catalog is created for that category. Plants without a category assigned, or with a custom category, are not included. In addition, an "All" plant catalog contains all plants regardless of category.
The plant catalogs are tab-delimited files saved in the location of the plant database.
Plant catalogs for existing tree species
By default, all plants in the tree Category of the database are already included (as a plant catalog file) in the Species Data dialog box for access by the Existing Tree tool. If desired, search the plant database for the trees you require, and then add only these trees to the existing tree species catalog.
To create a custom existing tree species catalog:
Open the plant database; see Accessing the plant database.
Search for the trees to include in the existing tree species catalog (see Searching for plants).
Select the File > Create 'Existing Tree' Catalog database command. This customizes the existing tree catalog to use only the plants found in the database search.
